


If silence can heal, I know it can kill

by fiveyaaas



Series: 5+1 Fics [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love Letters, Pre-Canon, title taken from the lyrics of meant by elizaveta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: Five times Five leaves a message to Vanya during his time in the Commission (and one time he delivers it in person).
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: 5+1 Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1866838
Comments: 21
Kudos: 179





	If silence can heal, I know it can kill

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Bri for giving the idea of Five leaving cryptic messages in places Vanya would see them while he was in the Commission. Also, all the 5+1 fics are unrelated to one another, so you can read them in any order!

**I. November 9th, 2007**

Five didn’t consider it a bad thing that he broke into the records of the Commission and read the file obsessively about Vanya Hargreeves. He didn’t think it was a crime to want to know about her, though oddly a lot of her file had redacted information, accessible on absolutely no level except likely in the mind of the Handler. He wasn’t going to search far enough into that  _ yet _ , content in just knowing where she would be when he took the mission he had successfully completed eight minutes ago. 

He hadn’t yet got a time period in which Vanya would have even been born, and he knew that this was a test of the Handler likely but he didn’t care. He needed to see his Vanya.

Unfortunately, Five didn’t account for the fact that the diner Vanya was currently employed at did not always have her waiting inside for her confidante to come to her. It was silly that he assumed Vanya to be waiting for him, a thought that had come simply from his desperation to see her. 

He settled into a booth, not wanting to walk out of the restaurant on the off chance she’d get called into a shift and be able to see him. Vanya wouldn’t likely even recognize him, he reminded himself. She would have just celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and he was in his fifties. It occurred to him that it was inappropriate for him to even be here, but he couldn’t convince himself to leave. 

At least until he heard the server who had been taking care of him talking to her co-worker at the cash register. 

“-told Vanya to go ahead and take the night off and that I’d switch the shift with her…” 

Years of training in subtlety let him cock his head just imperceptibly enough that they wouldn’t notice but he would be able to hear them clearly. 

“You think she actually even went out with him? She always shoots me down when I offer to set her up with someone. I suspect she’s waiting for someone. Poor little thing, I remember being that young and wanting to wait for some guy. Think I could’ve saved myself a little trouble if I didn’t.”

Five frowned distastefully at his coffee cup, but he was not about to blow his cover over something that little. He was keeping this outing quiet from both the Commission and Vanya. Even if he could retire in this instant, he wouldn’t even begin to know how he’d approach her. Sometimes he wondered if he actually would retire ever, or if he would have to escape on his own. 

“Maybe she’s just looking for a sign,” the other waitress said. 

It then occurred to Five that he wouldn’t be able to see Vanya tonight, but he could at least leave her a message. He was already grabbing a Sharpie from his pocket before he considered the fact that vandalism was frowned upon. 

He didn’t know what to write momentarily, but then his memories flashed to when Vanya had struggled once with a graphing problem in her math studies, asking him to explain why asymptotes were never capable of reaching an axis, why it even counted as not touching when it reached impossibly closer each moment. The irony of him being at her place of work, on a night that she nearly had a shift, and that this would be the closest he could be to her possibly _ever_ did not escape him. 

He drew a half-hazard attempt at a reciprocal function underneath the bowl holding coffee creamers. Only someone cleaning it up would notice. He also wrote “maybe someday” and a 5, something that would be nonsense to everybody but her. Satisfied with his work, he put the bowl on top of where he’d vandalized the table and went to pay his bill. 

**II. February 11th, 2009**

Five liked to think he hesitated when he killed people, that there was a moment before pulling the trigger that he considered what it meant to him, for his conscience, when he killed someone.

As it was, when he was given a mark not eight minutes away from where Vanya’s apartment complex lay, he didn’t even think before he killed the man and walked to her door.

It was still rare that he got missions in time periods where his family was alive. He was very aware now that the tracker on his person would let the Handler know exactly where he was going, and it filled him with a sick satisfaction that the Handler knew his loyalty would never change. Even if he was a killer, he would stay loyal to his family. He wouldn’t have even killed so many people if it weren’t for wanting to be with them in the first place.

Vanya was not inside of her apartment, which he actually had expected with her at this hour, likely teaching lessons at a little church that offered to host her. He stared distastefully at the nightmare of protective measures she had taken. He doesn’t have time to install locks on her windows, but she should be more cognizant of matters like that. She grew up with him telling her about creeps he had gone after, for God’s sake. 

He walked to her bookshelf, scanning the titles. She didn’t have the original Greek text of the Odyssey, but she did have an English translation, a nice hardback edition that he probably shouldn’t vandalize. The problem lay in the fact that he made a point to have his messages be significant. This was something they had read in their curriculum at the Academy. Plus, Odysseus did whatever he could to get back to his Penelope, and Five wanted these messages to be an assurance to her in the vaguest way possible, in a way that would not put her in danger of any of his enemies finding out but would let her hope for him. 

He flipped to page 57, knowing that she would clearly get the meaning there, and wrote, “I will be back one day.” He underlined the five in fifty seven and shut the book, placing it back on her shelf. 

Five took one last look at her apartment before he left. He wondered if maybe he should’ve written in the book to get better locks. Then again, she had him looking after her, and he was not above altering a timeline to keep her safe (though he hadn’t had to before). 

**III. May 23rd, 2012**

Blood stained Five’s clothes. The mission had gotten messier than it usually always did, and his hands shook as he considered going to Vanya. She actually would be in her apartment at this time, and he could go inside and beg her for her forgiveness. He figured if she could forgive him, he would be able to accept what he had done. 

Usually, Five could compartmentalize. It was nothing personal when he killed a person for his job, and he knew that if he didn’t take these jobs then somebody else would. He justified the killing by telling himself that it was a trial he had to face to be back with his family. 

He ultimately could not go to her, didn’t know what he would even say if she saw him. He didn’t want her to ask about the blood on his collar or to see the sadness in her eyes. He couldn’t take that. 

He went to Griddy’s instead. It at least would remind him of the people he left behind. 

He went inside, ordering a black coffee and sitting in the spot he always chose as a child. He grabbed the sharpie again without even thinking about it, just writing “forgive me.” It was cryptic and he didn’t even know Vanya would ever see this one. She was likely to have seen the others, but he had no idea if she even still went here. 

He wasn’t sure if writing these notes were for her or him anyways. 

**IV. September 16th, 2015**

He sat outside of her door for six hours, and he never went inside. He just wrote “sorry” against the wood, and he felt tears that he denied for a very long time forming. He didn’t know what would happen if he did cry though, so he pulled a flask from his jacket and drank. 

**V. July 11th, 2016**

Vanya would stop teaching her lessons at the little church pretty soon, moving them to her apartment instead. The room she was teaching a little kid in had a window at the door, and he could see her offering a warm smile to the student. 

Five wished she would look up. What would happen if she even did? She surely wouldn’t recognize him, but she would still ask who he was. He could technically tell her, and maybe she could convince him to leave the Commision. Maybe she’d beg that he would stay, and he would leave his life as an assassin because she asked him to and he would handle whatever consequences as long as she could be with him. 

She didn’t look up. She was less than twenty feet from him now. He was closer to her than he had ever been, but he could not bring himself to be close enough to touch her. 

He wrote the final note to her on an actual piece of paper. It was vague enough that nobody would understand, and he wrote exactly five sentences instead of leaving a signature. 

_ Maybe someday,  _ he reminded himself. 

**VI. October 1st, 2018**

This was Five’s last birthday before the world would end. Five didn’t really think birthdays applied to himself anymore, but he felt sentimental enough to stop by the diner that Vanya wouldn’t have worked at for years by this point. He settled into the same booth that he had written in after the first Commission assignment that kept him in Vanya’s time. 

He moved the bowl of french vanilla creamer and smiled. Nobody had bothered painting over his message. 

As he moved the bowl over to the side again, a body slammed down in the booth before him.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” the woman commented, and he glanced up at her and immediately his heart started pounding. 

“I’m sorry,” Vanya mumbled again, looking down at the table and already standing. “I always take this booth, you know creatures of habit or whatever.”

She started backing away, and he found himself able to speak. “I could move, if you’d like, or you’re welcome to sit with me.”

He internally cringed. An old man asking a twenty-something to sit beside him. He was sure he had come off as some sort of creep, and he hoped desperately that she would choose to ignore it.

She sat back down, and he moved to get up. “Oh, I was just taking you up on your offer.” She blushed, glancing down at the place he had scribbled his message. 

It occurred to him that maybe she felt sentimental too, since it was their birthday. He cleared his throat, not used to speaking to many people. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You seem upset.” 

“Oh, sorry, uh. It’s my birthday, and I just kinda miss my family right now.” 

He wasn’t supposed to know anything about her family, he reminded himself. “Why are you not with them?” he asked, which felt weird to do when he knew exactly why she wasn’t with them. 

“Well, I have six siblings, but I was only ever close to two of them. They’re,” she scrunched her face, weighing her words. “They’re not here right now.”

Ben was dead, he knew. Ben was kind to all of them, and he and Vanya likely had a friendship even after Five had gone, but she lost that too. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what he could say that was both sincere and didn’t let her on to who he was. If he told her who he was… 

No, he didn’t want her to get her hopes up again now. Not until he could be with her for sure. 

“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s weird, but this place reminds me of one of them. We had never even been here together, but… it seems like the kind of place he would go, maybe.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, sipping the coffee. 

“The coffee is really strong, for one,” she said, following his movement with her eyes.

Five smiled, looking down at the table again. 

He couldn’t be here much longer, someone would surely notice and put two and two together. “It was nice talking to you, but I have to go.”

He started to stand again, but she spoke before he could leave. 

“Thank you for talking for a little bit,” she called out, and he turned around in confusion. 

“You’re welcome,” he told her, not really knowing why just speaking to her would constitute a thank you. “Have a good night. Maybe our paths will cross again.”

“Maybe someday,” she said, with a small smile. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! 💕


End file.
